This is where Civil Comments, the startup Bogdanoff founded with Christa Mrgan, comes in.

The idea is simple (although the software is so complex it took a year to build): before posting a comment in a forum or below an article, users must rate two randomly selected comments from others for quality of argument and civility (defined as an absence of personal attacks or abuse). Ratings are crunched to build up a picture of what users of any given site will tolerate, which is then useful for flagging potentially offensive material.

Crucially, users must then rate their own comment for civility, and can rewrite it if they want (in testing, about 5% did).

It may not deter hardened trolls but, says Bogdanoff, the process reminds ordinary users that they’re not just “shouting into a void” – other people are judging them, too. It evokes the slight sense of social inhibition we feel in real life when asked to speak before an audience. “If somebody handed you a microphone and gave you a few moments in the spotlight, you would think: ‘Is this what I really wanted to say?’”

It’s early days – the system is being piloted by two local Oregan newspapers. But Mrgan insists it hasn’t led to sterile, sanitised comments. “People are still making jokes, being a little bit snarky, getting really opinionated,” she says. “The personal attacks, name-calling and abuse have gone, but the same feel has really stayed.”

Asking humans to judge each other can be a surprisingly powerful thing. Take the Uber taxi app’s rating system, which asks passengers and drivers to give each other star-ratings – essentially a way of creating a reciprocal relationship between two strangers, where each has a reputation to lose. The company doesn’t spell out the consequences for passengers who get bad reviews because, frankly, it doesn’t need to; passengers go to surprising lengths to keep a good rating without really understanding why it matters. But invoking a sense of being watched isn’t the only way platforms subliminally encourage social behaviour.

A few years ago, Facebook managers noticed a rush of complaints from users about friends posting photographs of them that they didn’t like. The pictures weren’t explicit; they just reminded users of something they would rather forget, or made them look stupid. These complaints were invariably rejected because no rules had been broken, yet friendships were being strained as a result. “We tried saying, ‘Why don’t you just message the person?’, but people didn’t quite know what to say,” says Milner, adding tactfully that not everybody “has the social skills” to resolve such petty squabbles.

So, Facebook introduced social reporting, which works like a teacher gently helping kids in a playground dispute to resolve things between themselves. Complainants get a template message to send to their friend, explaining how the picture makes them feel and asking politely for its removal. Usually, that’s all it takes – it is, says Milner, “helping you have an empathetic response” that leaves everyone feeling good. “We set up our systems to encourage people to be nice – to think about things before you post.”

It’s a classic example of what BJ Fogg, a Stanford-based behavioural scientist who specialises in the psychology of Facebook, calls persuasive design: if you want people to do something, don’t explain why, just show them how. Humans learn by imitation, which means modelling nice behaviour beats lecturing people to be nice.

Lately, Facebook’s plans for promoting harmony have become significantly more ambitious. Last month, its chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, provoked raised eyebrows in Davos by suggesting users could help undermine jihadi propaganda with a concerted counter-offensive of what can only be described as organised niceness. She cited a recent “like attack” staged by German users, who swamped a neo-Nazi group’s Facebook page with messages of inclusivity and tolerance.

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Europeans make, Jews take.

The modern formula is this: Jews within a host nation endeavor to control the media outlets, legitimize their special interest groups, erode societal standards, and take positions of power in finance, law, industry, organized crime, government, unions, academia, medicine, the arts, and the military. Using the resulting influence, they redirect the host nation's accumulated assets to aid Israel, attack Israel's enemies, and enrich themselves. The Jews call this "leverage", and it weakens the host nation.

It’s a classic example of what BJ Fogg, a Stanford-based behavioural scientist who specialises in the psychology of Facebook, calls persuasive design: if you want people to do something, don’t explain why, just show them how.

It's a bit like marketing where you direct someone to make the purchase and make it easy for them to do so.